Love your enemies

Thanks to Justice.net.nz for finding this and posting it. These words ring so true for me. If they ring true for you too, let us pray this poem together.

Lord of all enemies, critics, competitors,
It’s not that we love violence;
We just hate the hard work of peace.
We would rather not sit with our rivals
We would rather not look them in the eye, seek to understand.
We turn them a cold shoulder.
We ignore their emails and phone calls.
We insult them when we’ve had enough,
We battle them with our wits, insisting on winning.
We wish them gone, dead.
We assume one of us must leave.
Forgive our haughtiness.
Remind us that you love them as much as you love us.
That they bear your image as much as we do.
That on your holy mountain,
Everyone finds a place
Enemies become friends,
Predators become pets
Vipers become playmates.
Give us the heart and the stamina we need
To take the hard, upward road of peace.
- Written by Byron Rempel-Burkholder, editor, Faith & Life Resources, Mennonite Publishing Network

National’s Slash and Burn

Everywhere I turn, I hear horror stories of how the new Government is cutting funding to essential community services here in NZ. Adult Community Education, Enviroschools, NZAAHD, the National Youth Workers Network, Youthline, OUT THERE!, Te Reo Marama.. the list goes on. It seems that this new government’s strategy for dealing with a recession is to cut services to the young and vultnerable, who will be most affected by the financial crisis. The Alliance Party are calling this ’social vandalism’, and I don’t think they’re far off.

Ironically, in a press release this month, Tariana Turia announced that

‘That the Government is committed to strengthening its community relationships and that it intends to put this into an agreement by the end of the year…

.. “This is an opportunity to define the relationship that the sector and government wish to have, based on mutual respect and trust. It will focus government agencies’ attention on areas where further effort is needed to strengthen relationships to achieve common goals,” Minister Turia said.”‘ (Source)

What a joke.

If the Government is serious about working more closely with the Community sector, they could start by listening to the uproar and disgust surrounding the funding cuts occuring across the country.

If Government is serious about engagement, they could listen to sector experts when developing their policy to ensure that it is based on evidence and best practice. Instead, they create boot camps to ‘deal with’ troubled young people without waiting for the results of the Social Services Select Committee on the efficacy of such camps, or listening to the advice of the Families Commission who said the camps would do little to reduce youth offending and in some cases might increase it. Meanwhile the pleas from youth development professionals for the funding to be spent on early intervention and prevention instead go unheard and unfunded. Let’s get real.. the boot camps were never anything more than a political charade, designed to create an impression during the election campaign that National would be tough on crime

National’s image of ‘we’re a party who likes to work with everyone’ may have helped them win the election, but there is little evidence so far it is anything more than talk. Here’s hoping the worst is over, but I’m not holding my breath.

I like Batman

The author was reading my mind when he wrote this one.

Asher and I, online

On my friend Rowan’s photography website,  InVision photography =)

Creationism

This is a response to an uncomfortable and disheartening article written by my Blogosphere buddy, Pastor Aaron, here.

The article describes Aaron’s experience (as a Christian) of arriving at a Creationist lecture disguised as an Atheist, and how he was treated so poorly by the Christians there. I quote Aaron:

“While I did not have a T-shirt (a symbol anyway) it was obvious that there was a distinctive way that we were being treated because of the shared identification.  There were hateful glances, exaggerated perceptions, waxing surveillance by security, and anxious but strong ‘amens’ accompanying a lecture on “The Ultimate Proof of Creation” by Dr. Jason Lisle.”

Again I am reminded of James W. Fowler’s ‘Seven Stages of faith,’ which I blogged about not long ago. The ‘atheist-bashing’ people Aaron describes in his post sound just like Stage 3 of Fowlers’ progression- ‘the loyalist’.

Loyalists are conformists. They are acutely aware of what others expect of them and how they view them. This is a ‘tribal’ stage with a clear idea of what it means to be part of your particular group, and clearly defined boundaries of who is in or out. They have a strongly held but uncritical faith, often unable to explain why they believe things beyond referring to some external authority – “the Bible/my pastor says so.” Unfortunately, Fowler believes most adult Christians (in the West) are at this stage. I think this is an important part of the faith journey, but a poor place at which to finish it.

As for the Creationism stuff… well, while all Christians agree that God created everything, after that we seem to sit along a ’spectrum’ of beliefs about how exactly God chose to do this .. from those at one end who adhere strongly to a young earth theory, to those who accept the current model of evolution as the way God chose to work (which is the official line of the Catholic Church) at the other.

What I find interesting is this – that, as far as I can tell, the place a Christian locates themselves along this spectrum seems to have absolutely NO correlation to how well they imitate Jesus or how transformed their life is. None. Zippo. Zilch.

So why do we care so much?? To me, the Creation/Evolution debate seems like a terrible black hole that sucks up Christians’ time and attention, where they could be focused on better things, like helping the solo mum next door who can’t feed her kids. Instead, a Creationist or Evolutionist can sit at their Apple Macs eating their bucket of fried chicken (or for vegetarians, insert yummy luxury food here) as they argue with each other over the internet, while the mum next door and her kids starve. As Christians, why don’t we just accept that God somehow made this amazing beautiful world around us, and move on? C’mon people, we don’t have to be right all the time … we just have to be in right relationship. Jesus doesn’t need defending. He couldn’t be bothered even defending Himself. He just got on with what He knew He was supposed to do.

If the starving single mum example seems far-fetched, we must at least heed the words quoted from ‘Shamelessly Atheist’ in Aaron’s article – “.. to Ken Ham and his minions we atheists are bogeymen, inherently immoral and evil.”

‘Shamelessly atheist’, I’m so humbled that you take the time to read blogs like Aaron’s and comment calmly and insightfully on them. I feel your pain, and I personally apologise on behalf of all insecure, defensive, myopic Christians who constantly forget that the line that seperates Good and Evil does not run between groups of people, but inside every human heart!

I’m always reminded of a great quote from Shane Claiborne:

“Whenever someone tells me they have rejected God, I say, “tell me about the God you have rejected”. And as they describe a God of condemnation, of laws and lightning bolts, of frowning gray-haired people and boring meetings, I usually confess “I too have rejected that God”

Perhaps, as Aaron says, we have more in common then we think? I believe it is time for a new, more open-minded dialogue that doesn’t demand that the ‘other’ use the same vocabulary as us before we begin to listen to them.. a dialogue that springs from the common ground of respect and truth-seeking.

The Walled World

Yet another diagram that puts things in perspective.

If this leaves you wanting to know more, then the Global Village video is a goodie.

The Billion-Dollar Gram

Check out this awesome colourful diagram.

A creative but disturbing insight into exactly just what we spend our money on!

What stands out to me the most are contrasts like:

- US annual Defense budget : $440billion

compared with

- Amount needed to feed every child in the world for a year: $54billion

or

- Cancel all of Africa’s debt to Western nations: $200billion

And the big shocker…

- Amount spent on Iraq war so far:  $3000billion

Think of what we could achieve with that much! Yikes.

Certainly puts things in perspective huh?

Free, sustainable transportation?

‘When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered-cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago’.
- John Frazee

My Future House, part 1

One day I will have my own house, and it will be the awesome.

It will be a place where people in need can come and stay, where manaakitanga (hospitality) is the chief law, and where people will come to rest, find healing, and laughter.

I’ve decided to dream about my future house here on my blog. So here goes. My first of many ideas.

➢    The Drumming Room
I love percussion, ever since Callum lent me his djembe and I played around with it over a summer and suddenly discovered I had rhythm (I still can’t dance though).

Percussion is brilliant, because its both creative and communal. Beginner or Master, you can join a drumming circle and add something to it. The Beginners need the Masters to show them what’s possible, and the Masters need the beginners to lay down the steady rhythms over which they like to improvise. Its fun, interactive, esteem-building, participatory, and awesome. And with a bit of creativity, you can make a noise on just about anything, as groups like Stomp and Strike have shown us.. bring on the pipes, trash cans and corrugated iron!

So, my drumming room. It will look something like all of these pictures combined:

It will need to be soundproofed of course, but that’s easy enough with a bit of ahrd work. Besides, I’d love to open up the room to the community for different projects. It would be a great asset to youth development initiatives and alternative education classes etc. Most young people I’ve met would love to have a go at making a racket! Why not make a racket and build community at the same time?

Good times.

Amusing ourselves to death

I’m a big fan of authors like George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). They both painted eerily accurate portraits of the kinds of problems we might encounter in future civilisations.

Here’s a brilliant cartoon that compares the ideas that Orwell and Huxley both had about the future, and how it appears that Huxley is the one who’s fears are a lot closer to being true than we would all care to admit.